Estate ‘spring cleaning’: A Workers’ Party tradition

Singapore — The Workers’ Party (WP) shared about their yearly tradition of “estate spring cleaning” on Thursday morning (Feb 11)

The Sengkang GRC MP Jamus Lim posted about his experience ‘spring cleaning’, which took place on Wednesday (Feb 10).

The ‘spring cleaning’ is a seasonal tradition for town council operations. It was first started by ex-#workersparty chief Mr Low Thia Khiang: to walk our constituency in its entirety, pointing out issues that could be rectified on an estate-level “spring cleaning. The party members and volunteers would walk about the GRC, and look out for issues which need addressing.

For the Sengkang MP, that meant walking through every single cluster in Anchorvale over the course of the day, alongside dedicated property and horticulture officers, and sharing various conservancy and maintenance concerns, potential improvement ideas, and war stories of their favourite spots in the estate, and why.

He noted that due to the traditional spring cleaning residents would partake in, there was a surge in bulky items, trash, and recyclable material around the area. As such, the party has organised strategies to deal with this spike. Some measures they have taken include the daily collection of bulky items (instead of weekly), increasing the number of garbage bins in the estate, as well as giving instructions to the cleaners when dealing with recyclables.

This was supported by other members of the party, such as member Kenneth Foo, who contested for the East Coast GRC in the 2020 elections.

While other GRC’s may not have had this “Spring Cleaning”, the members who ran for the East Coast GRC have also been going to the ground, to offer support and well wishes to the residents. Kenneth Foo shares that their members had spent the past weekend (Feb 6) visiting the residents, and gifting homemade CNY goodies, donated by a bakery. They also visited multiple hawker centres and markets to wish the patrons a happy Chinese New Year.

The WP wishes all citizens a Happy Lunar New Year!

Denise Teh is an intern at The Independent SG. /TISG